3. Dangun Feveron (PS4) - 14 Jan (5hrs)
Not as complex or as fun as other Cave shmups, but the wackiness is welcome. The three different modes don't really feel that different and the original Arcade mode isn't as fun for me - I don't likle having to chase my score multipliers on the screen, I want them all to come to me, which is what Super Easy and Fever modes do. Easy platinum, though!
[8]

1. Castlevania Legacy of Darkness (N64) - 2hrs

A playthrough of Henry's short campaign that is unlocked after completing the main quest with Cornell. You are tasked with saving 6 children in 7 game days, the levels are from the main quest but are road blocked and more streamlined.

I first played this back in 2021 and gave it a generous 7/10 despite its obvious short comings. For what it is, this a decent little side quest that would definitely be a slice of DLC in modern times. Having said that, anyone who knows the history of this game knows the whole package is basically Castlevania Director's Cut, and what the original release should have been in the first place.

Anyway, now Henry's quest is complete I have unlocked Reinhardt and Carrie's campaigns, which are slightly redesigned from the first game and considered the definitive way to play them. I will come back to this again in a couple of years and finally play Reinhardt's quest.

So yeah much like my original review I enjoyed this. Like I said back then, it is not good, but pure personal enjoyment. The early 3D era was when I was probably into gaming more than ever, and I'm largely immune to the jankiness that came from the generation when developers were still trying to find their feet in a new dimension. 

7/10 

My list

2. Sonic the Hedgehog (MD) - 1hr 30mins

Probably the weakest of the Mega Drive Trilogy, but easily the most iconic for me.

I still get a kick out of this game and unlike most, even enjoy the dreaded Marble and Labyrinth Zones. The music is top notch but doesn't quite hit the heights of the second game, which I still think is the pinnacle of the series in that regard.

The biggest negative for me is the last Zone, Scrap Brain. It has a big difficultly spike compared to the rest of the game, is full of cheap deaths, and just poorly designed imo.

There's not many games that transport me back in time, but this is certainly one of them. Iconic as fuck, and gets an extra point for being a serious fanboy head turning title during the great war.

8/10 

My list

2. Storyteller 5ish hours

This is a really charming, simple but clever little puzzle game you can play on your phone if you have Netflix. Essentially, you are given a single sentence outcome and have to create X number of story frames, which involve scenarios, and placement of characters, to facilitate this.

I'll use a very very early example. If it is something like "love found after loss"

Frame one is character 1 and 2 in the love (wedding) background.

Frame 2 is character 1 looking on at character 2 in the graveyard setting, and character 2 is placed over the grave.

Frame 3 is character 1 with character 3 in the love background.


It gets way more weird and silly and complex from there, often using the same characters for more and more ridiculous settings.

Later modifiers such as "time passing" come in, but it is never more complex to play than drag and drop. There are some extra challenges that are optional that the game throws at you, but it's just an amicable, quick game, ideally suited to a 20-30 minute burst. Much like Into The Breach, it's a great fit for Netflix gaming. I won't remember it at the end of the year, but I enjoyed It.

[7]

Persona 4 Golden - PC - 48hrs 30mins more investigative fun with the Scooby gang. This time in a small town where a series of strange murders happen. Even though I owned this many years ago I put off finishing it for one reason or another but I’m glad I came back to it. Overall it’s a great game with that nice loop of limited choices in the day, interspersed with dungeon battles in another world. I think they improved pretty much everything with P5, except this is a tighter story and, if my memory serves me well, a much shorter playtime because of it. It’s a great turned based JRPG [9]

regmcfly wrote:

2. Storyteller 5ish hours

About 10 years ago I started a thread about a flash game called Today I Die. It could be played and completed in minutes, but it was special.

The dev had some other games, all complete in a shirt time, and all showing concepts - one of which was called Storyteller.

Long story short, I’ve been waiting for this game eagerly for a decade. Like, genuinely one of my most anticipated games.

He added nothing except an Annapurna sheen…

Yessss mate

Have to say the real solution is pretty bloody obtuse. You’ve got a very small chance of making the “right” decision.

I actually quite liked…

8. SANABI - Switch (8-9hrs)

Grapple-hook platformer I stumbled across while scoping the coming soon section of the EShop a couple of months ago.  The trailer and a solitary review out there at launch were enough to make me cross my fingers and dive in at the 20% off day one price, and I'm happy to report that it delivered beyond my wildest hopes.  Of course I'm always optimistic that things I like the look of and buy will bang, but realistically I know that unknown treasures tend to have a ceiling of greatness.  Admittedly it took me a while to properly get going with it, but once I'd learned to embrace the stop start nature of the playable sections - the action is regularly punctuated by lengthy dialogue scenes - I began to wonder how a game this fucking good can exist in the phantom zone of deep digital storefronts.  In many ways it reminded me of the sublime MO: Astray (my second favourite game of 2020, a year stuffed with absolute belters imo) in the way that a hitherto unknown developer managed to quietly release a gorgeous pixel art side scroller dripping with quality that blew my socks off.

Yes, the front and centre nature of the story may be divisive to some players looking for the balletic carnage teased in trailers, but if you approach this as an action narrative game, which it essentially is, there's a good chance the dyst(r)opian future story beats will hit their mark.  It's not the best written indie game you'll see this month, and it might be the worst in terms of script translation, but the story goes places and as a serial skipper when it comes to this sort of thing I must say that I came away mightily impressed.  To reiterate: I don't often give a flying fuck what's going on in most games ever, but I was on the hook for this because - especially when compared to other indie grappling hook games - it's off the hook.  Some outcomes are overly telegraphed, some scenes are tremendously mawkish, some non-playable segments stretch out for Kojima levels of watch-don't-play, but I thoroughly enjoyed the twisty turny journey.  Action purists be warned though - I'd say the non-playable sections take up somewhere in the region of 40% of the game's runtime (if anything the ratio is even more skewed than Katana Zero, which adopted a similar approach).  I'll add that you can skip the cut-scenes if you so wish, so if anyone ran for the hills feel free to come back - there's a 5hr all-action game here if you want it.  

I've seen this called derivative in one or two of the three or four reviews out there, but that's only true on an I'm-so-basic level.  Of course we've had grappling hook platformers before - I've played a baker's half dozen of them in here over the past few years - but the feeling of control puts this in a completely different space to its peers, imo.  Hyperbole haters, look away now: there aren't a vast number of things in the history of gaming that beat the perfection of the controlled swing mechanic in this.  Once the hookshot has found its mark you can manually boost left or right once per attach, allowing you to fling yourself towards/away from danger (or completely around an object in a circular motion) in the blink of an eye.  Coupled with the snap-to move that's introduced after a few hours it's nigh-on perfect, and even when extra buttons and considerations are chucked into the mix further on I managed to keep on top of it all, to the point where I absolutely obliterated the final few playable sections and felt like a gaming God.  There were a handful moments that were up there with the genuine toppest gaming tiers for me, for reals.  There's a generous bullet time move assigned to the right stick (so generous it never depletes and you can use it as much as you like), but I only found myself reaching for that on a few occasions as I thought the marriage of speed and control was perfect without it. It's all about movement and character placement, to the point where even the combat requires perpetual flow with a constant eye on positioning.  To go back to the start of this paragraph, derivative?  Not for me.  I mean yeah, if that's how you want to roll by all means dismiss it because it looks like (and looks like it plays like) other things, but I'd say there's plenty of originality in the screen to screen moments here.  The closest thing I can think of in terms of inertia and grapple is an incredibly difficult indie platformer called Remnants of Nazareth, which I thought I really liked until it bullied me into submission.
      
Visually I thought this was stunning.  Mileage may vary on this as it manages to conjoin almost cheap looking environment art with phenomenally well animated, sumptuously lit pixel characters to magnificent effect.  It's a wonderful looking game.  The music is great too.  The repetitive rousing synth choons are a great fit for the checkpoint to checkpoint action, and there are some truly excellent pieces elsewhere.  

I'll briefly get the negatives out the way, as unfortunately there are a few: It chugs a bit in one section on Switch, but otherwise I'll tip my hat to the mostly flawless performance.  The final section doesn't deliver the all-guns-blazing boss rush majesty I was looking for, and despite the fact that I enjoyed the way the story wrapped up I'd say the last hour was an anticlimax in terms of action.  I've played a lot of checkpoint indie platformers in my time, and modern gamers be warned: restarts are often a screen or two meaner than I've come to expect from this sort of thing.  It's not quite piss-take territory, but it dips a toe in old school more than most similar titles.  It's a mostly well balanced balancing act though, and also slightly easier on the whole than anything approaching masocore.  You'll die and you'll be punished, but you'll rarely make the same mistakes twice.  Although having said that, there's a particular way to die by getting trapped inside a danger zone, then having to watch helplessly as your character's health drains before you can escape that should have been rejigged or patched out.  There's also an unnecessarily average vehicle section (MO: Astray parallels ahoy!) in the middle that would have been absolutely fine if they'd had the presence of mind to put the vehicle at the bottom of the screen instead of the middle as it ascends.  And yes, some of the cut-scenes do go all on for just a bit too long.  Still, all grumbles are minor.

There are no power ups.  There are no secrets tucked away in the stages that lead to upgrades or permanent health boosts.  There are no equippable* charms or perks, and (with very pedantic exceptions) there's only ever one route to take through each zone.  In some ways it's steadfastly old-fashioned, but perhaps moreso than other primo pixel Moot 'em ups (such as Flynn: Son of Crimson, Gravity Circuit or Infernax, all of which take aim at an approximation of a time and place), it's also hugely accomplished at doing its own thing. For even more kudos it's a speedrunner's delight too.  

Another long review then, but I'm so impressed with this, and none of the blemishes took enough of a chunk out of a big fat [9].  Someone play this please. 



*42 years old and I've only just discovered this isn't a real word.



Yes it does play as good as it looks.

Nice. Sending a smoke signal up to @Tempy in an attempt to repay the MO: Astray rec. Not that I can pinpoint exactly why I think they complement each other.

Not sure. I'd probably say Elf is more likely to get on with it than you on the whole, even though the gameplay is more your cup of tea? It regularly takes control away from the player for the chatty bits. Not my thing on paper either.

I was wondering how website certification fitted into it.

Great review.

Nice. I played through a few of those a couple of years ago, also really enjoyed Loop Master.

I'll bite at some point.